About the Cover Illustration

The figure on the cover of Activiti in Action is captioned “Member of the Eastern Goths,” also known as the Ostrogoths, an ancient Germanic tribe that in the late fifth century AD established a large kingdom in Italy. Their descendants still live in northern Italy today. This illustration is taken from a recent reprint of Balthasar Hacquet’s Images and Descriptions of Southwestern and Eastern Wenda, Illyrians, and Slavs published by the Ethnographic Museum in Split, Croatia, in 2008. Hacquet (1739–1815) was an Austrian physician and scientist who spent many years studying the botany, geology, and ethnography of many parts of the Austrian Empire, as well as the Veneto, the Julian Alps, and the western Balkans, inhabited in the past by peoples of many different tribes and nationalities. Hand drawn illustrations accompany the many scientific papers and books that Hacquet published.